There is currently a lot of oil being used in making plastic
Solving this problem is important because a lot of crude oil is being used to make plastic when it could be used in other effective ways
My design is to make plastic from bacteria by genetically changing it so that it produces plastic that uses less energy and is more precise
Oil is only supposed to last us another 50 or so years if we continue to use it at this rate and hopefully by cutting down the amount that we use for plastic, it could make a difference.
It's hard to make very small pieces of plastic and other materials so the possibility of getting pieces in whatever shape you want as small as you want could be very useful
Image result for bacterial photography
Competing Technologies
People are already starting to use bacteria to make plastic but my idea is not exactly like that because i'm trying to use the same technology as what is used in bacterial photography but instead of the bacteria releasing dark pigment, it releases plastic
There is also some nanotechnology that can make some pretty small things but it won't be as precise as using bacterial photography to make plastic because the resolution is around 100 megapixels per inch and that's pretty much as accurate as you can get for making small pieces of plastic.
The normal plastic that is being made right now is being made out of crude oil and that is the dominant type as of right now but if the method of using bacteria to make plastic can become more efficient, then it would zoom past the old method of using oil because it will be much more eco friendly and also be less expensive
Image result for oil barrels
The Design
The bacteria react to light so that where there is no light, the bacteria makes plastic and wherever there is light, nothing is formed
The input that the bacteria would be responding to would be if whether or not light was shining on the bacteria
You need to genetically modify the gene so that it can sense light by adding a light receptor protein from a photosynthetic blue-green algae to the cells surface.
Finally there must be a protein that is able to make plastic and this exists but i'm not exactly sure how it works
If it is an OR switch then if there is light then there won't be any plastic produces but wherever there is not light, plastic should start growing
Add a petri dish of agar so that the bacteria has food to survive
As of right now it takes 12-15 hours for the bacteria to completely grow and make plastic and this may be a problem but hopefully we can somehow speed it up in the future
A unique light projector shines onto a filter paper that is on the petri dish and wherever the filter paper blocks out the light, plastic is made.
Expected Results
If light shines on bacteria it won't do anything
If there is not light shone onto the bacteria plastic will be produced.
If the results are exactly like this then a thin sheet of plastic would have been made in whatever shape and size was expected
Since with the bacterial photographs the quality was 100 megapixels per inch, I am hoping that the precision of the edges on the plastic is close to being that accurate
Light
Production of Plastic
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Advantages
It is more cost effective than using crude oil for plastic and you don't really need to rely on the availability of oil
Using bacteria to make plastic could completely change the plastic business because if it can be more efficient, there would be no point of using oil and everyone would turn to using bacteria instead
By using the bacterial photography tech as well, you also have the ability to make the most precise parts available
the production of plastic in USA uses up 331 billion barrels of petroleum which is the equivalent of fueling a million cars for a year and the usage of petroleum causes a ton of pollution but making plastic from bacteria does not have these problems.
Potential Problems
The only real problem that this could face is if it doesn't get made in the exact shapes that they are supposed to be in but it should still make plastic even if it's not the same shape as it's supposed to be but that is what makes this a lot different than just making plastic with bacteria
There aren't too many dangerous things about this experiment but just i case everyone should still wear a lab coat, goggles, and gloves. Nobody should get hurt as long as they don't do anything stupid.
If the bacteria evolve to stop making plastic or release something poisonous, that could be bad but there aren't really many things that could go wrong because a lot of this is already proven to work
The one major downside to this is the bad efficiency and the lack of speed because it takes time for the bacteria to grow. Hopefully there are solutions to these problems that can be found but other than that there aren't many major downsides
This is a safe project and there is a very slim chance of anything bad happening
The upside to just trying this out is very high because the worst that could happen is that the bacterial photography part won't work as expected but if it does work the rewards are astronomical
Testing
To test the effectiveness of this experiment, you should try to grown= bacteria to make different shapes and try to see if it works out and check how accurate the shapes are to what the goal was.
By testing this, you can find out what the downfalls are to doing this and you can try to fix it the next time you do it so as you continue to do tests it will get better each time.
The most important part to test would be to test to see if the shapes are accurate because that is one of the biggest selling points and i'm not sure if that will completely work with the accuracy that I would be hoping for
Testing can reveal greater potential because once you complete it once, you can try to find ways to make it better and try to apply these new ideas the next time and check to see if there are noticeable differences
Presentation link below:
presentation
Purpose
Competing Technologies
The Design
Expected Results
Advantages
Potential Problems
Testing